


A Bleak Midwinter

by crumbly_biscuit



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Alison is sad, Pat is a good friend, because they're not around if she's inherited that house, is this right?? pls let me know, mention of Alison's parents deaths, post-Episode: The Ghost of Christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28287567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumbly_biscuit/pseuds/crumbly_biscuit
Summary: Christmas can be just as hard for those left behind.
Relationships: Alison/Mike (Ghosts TV 2019)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 58





	A Bleak Midwinter

It was her mother who first began teaching Alison to play piano. It’s one of the only memories of her mum she has left and she’s not even sure she didn’t make it up.

She’d been three, she was told later. It must have been close to the time her mum had died but she can’t remember that either so she can’t be sure.

She’s sure it was hardly playing piano at three but the thought of being sat on her mum’s lap at their upright in the front room nonetheless brings a sad warmth to her heart. The phantom feeling of her mother’s arms around her, her hands over her own, guiding her to play each note in turn from the middle C through the octave. The echo of her voice as she said the name of each aloud.

One of her earliest true memories is asking her father for piano lessons. It must’ve been the Christmas after she turned four, and probably not the kind of present most Reception-aged children usually asked for. She’d been so happy she’d cried when he’d told her on Christmas morning.

And yet, playing piano was always bittersweet, her whole life. It would be always associated with that memory of her mum, however fabricated it may be. She knows she probably can’t really remember being held by her mother, or the sound of her voice. She can’t even remember her face if she’s not looking at her photograph.

In fact, she doubts she could pick her out in a crowd.

She doesn’t play as much now. After her dad died, the happy-sad memory of playing with her mum turned almost entirely sad, like everything in the rest of her life did for a while.

Time has made most things easier. Time and Mike. But there are still some things that hurt too much to do often. She supposes music will probably always be one of those things.

When she sings now, it is joking and she knows her old singing teachers would be rolling in their grave. If they were dead, which none of them probably are. Mostly it’s in the shower or the car and mostly with Mike and almost never serious. It hurts to sing seriously and remember being in the choir at school. In the lower sixth, she’d had a solo and remembering the smile on her dad’s face still makes her a little upset.

After the concert, she’d met her dad and he’d hugged her so hard she couldn’t breathe and she’d squirmed, worried about her damaging reputation of being moderately cool. He’d whispered how proud her mum would have been of her and even the idea of her mum was so distant she wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

That wasn’t long before his death.

Christmas is always hard. It’s ten years since her dad died and twenty-three since her mum and it is still hard and it probably always will be. Christmas is meant to be about family and she just doesn’t have any left.

In some respects, it’s a little easier now she has Mike. They spend it with his family every year because otherwise it would be just the two of them. And the ghosts, now, she supposes, although that might be a bit lonely for Mike.

But seeing Mike with his family does make her miss her own.

When she was six, she thinks, she’d written her letter to Father Christmas on her own for the first time. She’d promised she’d been good all year and that Mrs Green was really impressed with her reading now and if it wasn’t too difficult, would she be able to see her mum for Christmas?

She can still remember the look on her dad’s face when he’d read it. That year, she got a film projector and a packet of slides. On each one were photos of her mum, from before she was born, of her mum and dad, of her mum in the hospital with her, of the three of them at home, and on a little holiday they went on the summer before her mum got ill.

The one that had made her cry then and makes her still cry now is one of her mum in hospital for a different reason. Her head is shaved and she looks tired and ill but she’s still grinning at the camera, holding Alison to her like if she lets go everything will just fall apart.

After she sings with the ghosts and plays the piano earnestly like she hasn’t in years, after Mike’s family leave and the house falls silent, she takes the projector from the cupboard and the packet of slides from her bedside drawer.

It’s dark enough with the lights off to not draw the curtains. She’s sure she can hear Mike snoring from their bedroom down the hall. But that’s fine because she doesn’t want him to know what she’s doing.

There are tears choking at her throat even looking at the little envelope: _To my gorgeous Ali, I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you really wanted; I hope this is close enough. Love Dad xx_

She starts at the beginning, of pictures of a captivating young woman with dark hair and pale skin and a striped bikini. She’s posing playfully for the camera, her smile coy and her laughter is captured in the third photo of the series and it always brings a little smile to Alison’s own face.

The story that plays out through stills of the next few years is a happy one. Overwhelmingly happy, in fact. Her parents had lived a nice little life, undisturbed by sadness or tragedy, for seven years before she was born, and three after.

And then there's that last photo that's so sad. She’s crying a little by the time she places it in the projector but it shocks her into stopping when she sees it displayed. Morbid fascination draws her to it, and her eyes dance over every detail, picking out things she must’ve seen before but can’t help wondering if it’s the first time she’s noticing them.

There’s just something about it. Maybe it’s knowing it was taken a week before her mum passed, in those famous 'last good days' people always talk about. Or maybe it’s that she’s seen it so many times, that it’s the go-to reference picture she has when she thinks of her mum.

Whatever it is, it means she can’t look at it for more than a minute before she’s crying silently, desperate not to be too loud and draw any attention.

Sometimes, she’ll wake up from a nightmare she can barely remember and long to be held by her mum, for her dad to make her cocoa and let her sleep in his bed. And, because it’s the middle of the night, and the witching hour does strange things to people, it’ll make her suddenly and uncontrollably sad.

Sometimes it makes her cry, unexpectedly, and she’ll get out of bed to walk around the garden, feeling lost and confused. On the rare chance that Mike wakes up with her, he’ll hold her, stroking her hair until he falls back asleep. It never feels quite right. She loves Mike, a lot, but he can’t quite fill the gap in her heart that needs filling.

It seems strange, in the morning, that she’d felt that way. She’ll shake her head at herself as she looks in the mirror and scold herself for being an idiot. If Mike remembers, he never says anything and she can’t help but feel grateful for that. Every time it happens, it makes her feel so foolish. She’s sure Mike doesn’t feel the same way if he has a nightmare.

When she comes back to herself after thinking all these things, she realises she’s sobbing aloud and feels overwhelmingly mortified, wondering how long she’d been doing it. She takes a deep breath and releases it, letting her shoulders drop and all the tension dissipate.

"Knock knock?" a voice asks, startling her out of her reverie. That answers her question, then, she supposes - long enough for Pat to have heard. She turns to see him standing there, "Everything all right?"

He laughs awkwardly, coming to sit next to her on the sofa, "Bit of a silly question, I know," Pat mumbles, giving her a sad smile. Alison can feel her cheeks grow hot with embarrassment, looking down at her lap. Her hair is stuck to the side of her face with tears and her nose is running,  
"It’s fine," she croaks, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve before discretely doing the same to her nose.

Her knee grows suddenly cold and she looks at it to see Pat holding his hand there. He makes a retching sound and moves it quickly away,  
"Sorry," he coughs, and it brings a little smile to her face. They sit in silence for a moment or two and Alison turns her attention back to the photo on the wall.

"What are you looking at?" Pat asks, looking up at it too.

"Pictures," Alison says vaguely, tucking damp hair behind her ear. She sighs, staring at her mum’s smile, gravelly ill and yet so happy, and her own oblivious, cheeky grin. "I guess Christmas can be difficult for the living as well as the dead."

She looks back to find Pat watching her closely, "My mum died when I was three." She swallows hard, and she’s trembling a little, "I don’t really remember her. The only memory I really have is her playing piano with me." Pat’s eyes are all sad; she shrugs, "I’m not even sure it’s a real memory. Everything else is just from these slides."

She takes the photo from the projector and replaces it with one of their little family of three on holiday in France when she was two, "And that’s my dad. I think you’d have liked him a lot." She’s smiling at the picture but Pat can’t help but notice the tears welling up in her eyes, “I was sixteen when he died."

Shutting off the projector with a little sob, she sighs, switching on a lamp and wiping away a tear, "I guess I just miss them. I never know if it’s worse having Mike’s family around or not."

"We’ll always miss the people we love and can’t be near," Pat agrees. "I mean, you saw me yesterday when you mentioned Carol." Alison nods, sniffling, "But I also think that Mike’s family look at you one of their own."

She hums, shrugging,  
"I know. And I do love them. I’ve known them nine years and they’ve always been so lovely but…" she trails off, sighing.  
"But it’s not the same," Pat finishes for her, and she thinks he probably understands more than she thought he would. Maybe she’d underestimated how much all the ghosts would understand.

Still, she’s glad it was Pat that found her and not… well, any of the others would have been _fine_. It’s just, Lady B might’ve put her foot in it a few times, the Captain and Julian are both a little emotionally unattached, Kitty’s basically a child, Mary probably would’ve managed to find a way to reason her mum was a witch, and Thomas misinterprets almost everything she says to him. Robin might’ve been okay except he’d have gotten distracted by the projector. And, at the end of the day, she really does see Pat as a sort of father figure.

"Speaking of Carol," Pat segues a little awkwardly, even for Pat. Alison braces herself for some revelation or request about his wife but when Pat continues speaking, she realises she needn’t have been worried, "I noticed how excited you were to add a carol to the schedule, and how you kept asking Mike to ask his family." Alison clears her throat, unsure what to do but shrug, "I had no idea you could play or sing like that. It was… it was beautiful. Really."

Pat’s face reminds her of the look her dad gave her from the front row during her solo, and she feels her throat go tight,  
"It’s hard," she mumbles. "Even years later, I still find it hard to play or sing without thinking of them. Music used to be a huge part of my life but I couldn’t look at it the same way after my dad died." Pat’s smile becomes sad and she feels compelled to carry on, "Now I only really do it as a joke. It has to be fun to distract from the sadness."

"Today was the first time since he died that I’ve sung properly. We used to sing a carol together like that every Christmas." She looks down at her hands, fidgeting them like she can’t stop them moving. "I’d play and we’d sing. It was our special thing."

Alison sobs once, shoulders shaking as she does, "After he died, I sold the upright. I just couldn’t look at it anymore. There have been a lot of times I wish I hadn’t," she confesses. "It was a stupid thing to do, really. The only memory of my mum was sat at that piano and I’d had all those Christmases with my dad." She hiccoughs, trying not to cry. "And then we came here and the- the piano; I just wanted to sing with Mike’s family."

She looks up to Pat with an appreciative smile despite the tears in her eyes, "But I’m glad you guys all joined in instead because… because you’re my family now." She shrugs, the corners of her mouth turning up, "It wasn’t the same as with my dad but it made me… made me really happy."

“It was our pleasure.”  
Pat nods at her, watching as she packs up her slides and picks up the projector,  
"Thanks, Pat," she nods back. "And merry Christmas."

When she slips into bed next to Mike, he stirs, finding her body through the dark and pulling her in,  
"Where’ve you been?" he complains, voice muffled against her hair.

"It’s Christmas," she whispers, making him hum.  
"You were looking at that photo of your mum and getting sad," he sighs, and she knows he doesn’t approve but he also doesn’t really get it.

Just like he doesn’t understand why she’ll always be jealous of the way his mum hugs him too tight and too long, of the way his dad looks at him proudly when he thinks Mike’s not looking, and of the way his sisters tease him and wind him up.

And she knows she’ll probably always find piano sad because she always has, but maybe now she could join in at music club sometimes. If the others would sing with her. Maybe they can all help each other heal.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first fic i've ever posted so hopefully it's okay?? i may have stayed up until half one writing this with 'In the Bleak Midwinter' in the background?? i just love it and i'm so happy they sang, especially when Thomas pops up from behind the piano, plus Alison's little smile when everyone joins in :))


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